The Nightmare Begins - Chinua Achebe

May the twenty-sixth saw an emergency meeting of Ojukwu's special Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders in Enugu. The consensus was building across his cabinet that secession was the only viable path. "On May 27, the Consultative Assembly mandated Colonel Ojukwu to declare, at the earliest practicable date, Eastern Nigeria a free sovereign and independent state by the name and title of the Republic of Biafra."

It is crucial to note that the decision of an entire people, the Igbo people, to leave Nigeria, did not come from Ojukwu alone but was informed by the desires of the people and mandated by a body that con­tained some of the most distinguished Nigerians in history: Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria's, former governor-general and first ceremonial presi­dent; Dr. Michael I. Okpara and Sir Francis Ibiam, former premier and governor of Eastern Nigeria, respectively; and Supreme Court justice Sir Louis Mbanefo. Others included: the educator Dr. Alvan Ikoku; first republic minister Mr. K.O. Mbadiwe; as well as Mr. N.U. Akpan; Mr. Joseph Echeruo; Ekukinam-Bassey; Chief Samuel Mbakwe; Chief Jerome Udoji; and Chief Margaret Ekpo.

In a speech to the nation on May 27,1967, Gowon responded to Ojuk­wu's "assault on Nigeria's unity and blatant revenue appropriation," as the federal government saw it, by calling a state of emergency and dividing the nation into twelve states.

The official position from the federal government was that the cre­ation of new states was an important move to foster unity and stability in Nigeria. Many suspect a more Machiavellian scheme at work here. Gowon, understanding inter-ethnic rivalry, suspected that dividing the East into four states, land locking the Igbos into the East Central State and isolating the oil-producing areas of Nigeria outside Igbo land, would weaken secessionist sentiments in the region and empower minority groups that lived in oil-producing regions to stand up to what they had already dreaded for years-the prospects of Igbo domination.

On May 30, 1967, Ojukwu, citing a variety of malevolent acts directed at the mainly Igbo Easterners-such as the pogrom that claimed over thirty thousand lives; the federal government's failure to ensure the safety of Easterners in the presence of organized genocide; and the direct incrimination of the government in the murders of its own citizens ­proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Biafra from Nigeria, with the full backing of the Eastern House Constituent Assembly.' By taking this action Ojukwu had committed us to full-blown war. Nigeria would never be the same again.